The workshop is invite only. Some travel funds will be available for speakers.

About : How can artificial intelligence be oriented toward the common good? The belief in AI for good has widespread acceptance in the industry and among governments. Declarations from around the globe—Canada, China, South Korea, France, and more—call for the development of AI to have a social purpose. But what is that purpose?

The workshop seeks to develop a vision for a commons-based approach to the future of AI. It is an intervention to develop democratic approaches to digital disruption and understand transformations in citizen engagement. The workshop will produce a public report on the possibility of an AI as well as a series of video interviews capturing the discussion.

In this workshop, we invite you to reflect broadly on artificial intelligence and its relation to the commons as you consider the following questions:

What should an AI Commons be?

How could a commons-based approach guide the development of AI?

How does a commons approach differ from proposed ethical or rights-based frameworks?

How could the development of AI today—including the infrastructure and knowledge at its foundation—become a commons?

What forms of collective action and governance would be necessary? What movements and efforts already exist?

What latent commons or undercommons might we find in thinking about AI?

Could AI reshape how we think about the commons, leading to new theories or practices?

How might related (or unrelated) approaches to the commons be understood through AI and the commons (e.g., making kin, new materialism, infrastructures of care, or platform cooperativism)?

What histories and instances of the commons does an AI commons require for context and inspiration?

How might we imagine a future common world for the machines, environments, humans, and other life drawn together by the industrial efforts around AI?

How can humans, AI, and other agents collaborate equitably in these commons?

How might AI reproduce sustainably within the natural commons, unseating extractive and settler approaches to common worlds?